In deciding not to refer charges to state bar committees, Margolis does not tell us that Yoo and Bybee behaved admirably or according to the high standards that we should expect from Justice Department lawyers. Indeed, he says the opposite. Yoo and Bybee exercised poor judgment and let the Justice Department down. But Margolis argues that the Office of Professional Responsibility chose too high a standard to judge the professional responsibility of Yoo and Bybee. The OPR argued that Yoo and Bybee had “a duty to exercise independent legal judgment and to render thorough, objective, and candid legal advice.” This standard, Margolis explained, is much too high a requirement and not one that Yoo and Bybee were previously warned was the standard to which they would be held.

I know what you are probably saying: shouldn’t every government lawyer have to live up to this standard? Of course, they should, but the point is that this is a disciplinary proceeding. It’s not about what people should do, but about how badly they have to screw things up before they are subject to professional sanctions.

Instead, Margolis argues that, judging by (among other things) a review of D.C. bar rules, the standard for attorney misconduct is set pretty damn low, and is only violated by lawyers who (here I put it colloquially) are the scum of the earth. Lawyers barely above the scum of the earth are therefore excused.

Margolis concludes that Yoo and Bybee exercised poor judgment and made bad legal arguments. But lawyers often make arguments that are bad or even laughably bad, and this by itself does not violate the very low standard set by rules of professional responsibility. These rules are set up by jurisdictions to weed out the worst offenders, leaving the rest of the legal profession to make entirely stupid, disingenuous and asinine arguments that normal people with functioning moral consciences would not make. That is to say, rules of professional misconduct are aimed at weeding out sociopaths and people driven to theft and egregious incompetence by serious drug and alcohol abuse problems; they do not guarantee that lawyers will do right by their clients, or, in this case, by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America. In effect, by setting the standard of conduct so low, rules of professional conduct effectively work to protect all those lawyers out there whose moral standing is just a hair’s breadth above your average mass murderer. This is how the American legal profession simultaneously polices and takes care of its own.

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s coalition government collapsed this morning when the two largest parties failed to agree on whether to withdraw troops from Afghanistan this year as planned.

The fall of the government, just two days short of the coalition’s third anniversary, all but guarantees that the 2,000 Dutch troops will be brought home this year and will eventually prompt new parliamentary elections.

LONDON — It was heralded as a medical miracle. After spending more than two decades in a coma, Rom Houben, a Belgian man in his mid-forties, was suddenly able to communicate, news reports trumpeted last November.

Other experts questioned the method Houben that was apparently using to communicate. The technique is known as “facilitated communication,” in which the patient supposedly directs the hand of a speech therapist who typed out his thoughts.

Houben’s doctors said it seemed to be genuine. Until now.

Dr. Steven Laureys, a neurologist at Liege University Hospital in Belgium, one of Houben’s doctors, now acknowledges the technique doesn’t work and that while Houben is conscious, he is not communicating.

“We did not have all the facts before,” he said Friday. “The story of Rom is about the diagnosis of consciousness, not communication.”

I am watching NOW, on PBS… a local – “County Executive” – election on Long Island that the Democrats did not look closely enough at… the Democrat, Suozzi, fell to the challenger, a R, Mangano. Suozzi failed to get out the vote, left millions in unspent campaign funds and lost after a month of recounts by some 360 votes.

Property tax in Nassau Co is about $10,000 annually and a very high sales tax. So many of the national issues, jobs, cost of living, people out of work, residents forced to move… etc.

It PRE DATED the MASS election and no Democrats analysed how Suozzi lost.

“Today we mourn the loss of Alexander Haig, a great American who served our country with distinction,” President Barack Obama said in a statement Saturday. “General Haig exemplified our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service. He enjoyed a remarkable and decorated career, rising to become a four-star general and serving as Supreme Allied Commander of Europe before also serving as Secretary of State. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”

No, it all makes sense. And when somebody of the likes of Jimmy Dimond or Lloyd Blankfein (sp?) dies, they will be similarly eulogized by Obama XXX Exemplified our finest thief-philanthropist tradition.

LOL. Wait till he get’s to do Benny 16. Beloved by all – well – almost all- A leader in the …
~ PedoNazi Papal Tradition. ..

I was on the road in Hell for a few weeks, Rural Radio Jesus Land, about a 200 mile stretch of Bunker Your Family sponsored by Survival Foods. Ya know, the Absolute full spectrum dominance of shows like The Loin Girder and others, REMINDING ALL that The Libs, Commies, and Homo’s Are A’ Comins For Yer Quiverfull of Behbies. …

Oddly, ~ In Central Hell, perhaps due to some atmospheric anomaly, a weak pulse from NPR bleats through for an instant , and only an instant in the 110 mile an hour driveby, ( the wholly rational speed to drive while attempting escape).

Momentarily grateful , as one is for the monotony breaking
Gas Leak during the Fires of Hell Hour
( negative 89.5 FM on your listening dial)
NPR interrupted my tuned-to-radio-static channel to say that Obama’s Offensive in Helmand Province is unwinding, predictably into a bloody morass on the windswept plains of Afghanistan
NO! They say it’s “not going as fast” as McChrystal and the Obama Administration would like.

They are… So far, at least at Nefflix, there are only two discs, which have a total of 3 – 90 minute episodes… I just watched the one disc with two… The stories are dark, psychological mysteries… beautifully shot in Sweden. Wonderful interiors as well…

JUAN GONZALEZ: The number of Americans receiving food stamps is at an all-time high. Earlier this year, the Agricultural Department said one in eight Americans—nearly 38 million people—received food stamps last October. The New York Times reported that about six million Americans receive food stamps, saying they have no other income.

A new investigation from ColorLines Magazine, supported by the Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund, shows that some poor families are forced to sell their food stamps on the black market for cash in order to survive this prolonged recession.

When Congress overhauled welfare in 1996, it created the Temporary Aid to Needy Families, or TANF, program, which placed time limits on aid and made cash assistance contingent on finding a job.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, TANF is up for reauthorization this fall, and journalist Seth Wessler’s investigation focuses on the impact of both the recession and welfare reform in Hartford, Connecticut, a state which has the shortest welfare time limit in the country, just twenty-one months. Seth Wessler is a senior research associate at Applied Research Center, a think tank on race, and a staff writer for ColorLines Magazine. His article, “Selling Food Stamps for Kid’s Shoes,” is available online at colorlines.com.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! Explain what’s happening in Hartford.

SETH WESSLER: Well, this really is a story about what happens when the Great Recession meets welfare reform from 1996. It’s a story about what happens when people are pushed off of cash assistance by a welfare program that’s intent is to push people off of cash assistance, families trying to raise their children; what people do now that even those low-wage poverty jobs, that families have been stuck in for now a decade and a half, aren’t available.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul has won the CPAC presidential preference straw poll, capturing 31 percent of the vote. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who had won the conference’s contest the last three years, took 22 percent. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took 7 percent and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawkenty 6 percent of the 2,395 ballots cast.

I’m thinking how to phrase my Public Option action diary today and I want to know if we could still flood the D.C and local offices of the Senators with calls. I know we still need to tell the White House to step up on the Public Option.

Founding Member of Peanut Butter PAC- A People-Powered PAC

by pistolSO on Sat Feb 20, 2010 at 08:16:31 AM MST

No. (2+ / 0-)

And please don’t call today, you’ll fill up our voicemail and then no one else can leave them.

Pragmatic progressivism is the future.

by Pragmaticus on Sat Feb 20, 2010 at 10:09:05 AM MST

“our” voicemail? n/t (1+ / 0-)

“I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.” – Eckhart Tolle

Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.

Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come.

Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.

I don’t know what is happening in other states, but at least here, I have read, people wait a few weeks between each extension. Which has to be impossible. Congress sure did not care right before christmas… the extension lanquished while they stayed at home.

Dmitri Orlov is starting to look more prescient than ever when he scoffed at the notion of “jobs” in his book Reinventing Collapse.

“Jobs” are merely the embroidery on the fabric of society. For this large and growing underclass, it becomes about “favors” and “protections.” The “jobs” of the future will be about making nice with your neighbors (the more powerful your neighbors, the better) with whatever you have at your disposal (alas, for many women they have only their own bodies at their disposal).

It’s not the same thing as barter, though. The notion of barter is basically about substituting other stuff for devalued dollars. What Orlov was talking about was the use of neighborhood social capital – where you do favors for people out of largesse and then other people do favors for you. It’s going to take a long time to get Americans accustomed to reestablishing actual social bonds on that level.

Many “unmarketable” skills will become valuable on a person-to-person basis in an America with a large unemployed underclass – but of course, anyone in Soweto or Haiti could tell you that already.

Thursday’s summit could prove a pivotal moment in the year-long effort to overhaul the system.

Shailagh Murray and Michael D. Shear

Here’s the deal.
I’m running over the next reporter (Sorry – no private plane )
that checks off the cliched “could prove a pivotal moment” box in their word processor. I didn’t drive through Hell and survive Rural Radio to put up with that shit. LOL.

So it makes makes no Neva Mind to me if it’s about Health Care Reform, the Israeli Occupation, Our Endless Wars, or a reference to Brad and Angelina. The next MSM journo who scheisse~peddles the same ol’ “could be a pivotal moment” crap is a goner. 😉

hmm think it was catnip who linked to the Wapo Milbank article but I just saw this at Ben Smith. Id say, look for leaks to continue and accelerate.

GOOD LUCK!!

February 20, 2010

Categories:White House.

Rahm’s press shop

A telling line from a Dana Milbank column that channels and defends Rahm, and blames the Chicago loyalists for making large and small mistakes:

No wonder Emanuel has set up his own small press operation and outreach function to circumvent the dysfunctional ones that Jarrett and Gibbs run.

I’m not entirely sure what Milbank means: Rahm has always spun on his own behalf, and has an aide who used to be his press secretary. His implication is that they’re spinning reporters against the rest of the White House, but it seems worth noting that that aide is married to the White House communications director.

In fact, Flynn said he didn’t get a clear picture of what role West Milwaukee’s Badger Guns plays in selling crime guns that end up in his city until six police officers were shot in a two-year span – all with guns from Badger Guns or its predecessor, Badger Outdoors.

Before the law passed, it was easier to see such trends and Badger Outdoors ranked at the top, according to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In 2005 alone, the store sold 537 crime guns – most in the nation.

As public pressure mounted on gun dealers, a little-known congressman from Kansas slipped sweeping secrecy rules into a giant federal budget bill, protecting law-breaking gun stores from scrutiny and making it harder for law enforcement to get information it considers vital.

U.S. Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), who is the second-largest congressional recipient of National Rifle Association cash, said his legislation – commonly referred to as “Tiahrt” (pronounced TEE-heart) – is intended to protect undercover officers.

Flynn called the congressman’s rationale for the law “a cynical fig leaf.”

“Tiahrt was enacted after the ATF published reports telling everyone who the irresponsible gun dealers are. Suddenly officer safety was at risk? That is a crock,” Flynn said. “It is sad, sad, sad that Congress is willing to endure this language and continue to be a willful accomplice in the arming of criminals with high-quality firearms.”

By putting it in a budget bill, Tiahrt assured his measure would be passed without a separate up or down vote. Seven years later, there still hasn’t been one.

U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) is one of the only members of Wisconsin’s delegation to vote on the secrecy measure – and he changed his position.

Obey voted against the Tiahrt Amendment in 2003 when it first came to the House Appropriations Committee. A year later, Obey changed his position and endorsed an even more restrictive version of the measure.

After Obey rose to House Appropriations Committee chairman, he again backed the secrecy rules in 2007. A spokesman said Obey was not available to comment.

Tiahrt’s amendment not only put records off limits to the public, it choked off law enforcement’s access to gun-trace data that is crucial for dismantling criminal organizations, according to Flynn and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm.

The change means ATF can no longer say which stores sell the most crime guns. It is impossible to know where Badger Guns ranks today nationally.

ATF also won’t give Milwaukee police the gun-trace data from other cities – even neighboring suburbs. And Chisholm cannot get trace information from ATF for all Milwaukee County police departments, though that is his jurisdiction.

“If you are playing blind man’s bluff with that information, you are unnecessarily handicapping our efforts,” Chisholm said. “I have no interest in taking political shots at anybody. I just want them to let us do our job, in a restrained but proper way.”

Local cops have been making a big deal of it …. of course it helps that a lot of them and the prosecutors are Republicans and the local pols responsible are national Dems.

It’s interesting, since the city Republicans have to fight not only the dems they’re going after, but the suburban/rural Republican gun nuts in this state. They’re cooperating pretty closely w/ the Dem mayor on this.

Rawnsley reveals that another victim of the prime minister’s wrath was Bob Shrum, a respected American political consultant and speechwriter, who had worked for Brown for years. When Brown was accused of plagiarising phrases used by Al Gore and Bill Clinton in his 2007 conference speech, the prime minister screamed at a shaking Shrum: ‘How could you do this to me, Bob? How could you fucking do this to me?’

Our country’s power elite is, quite literally, governed by the pre-adolescent verbal trick of “heads I win, tails you lose,” with “I” being high-level officials seeking to flout the law and “you” being the rule of law itself. The absurd threshold of attorney misconduct discussed by Balkin is merely the “heads I win” of this formulation, allowing advising attorneys to be shielded by nearly insurmountable ethical hurdles. The “tails you lose,” meanwhile, is the equally impervious ability of deciding officials to hide behind even the most frivolous legal advice of the “heads I win” attorneys.

Indeed, to completely eviscerate the rule of law, the laughably narrow attorney misconduct standard must be combined with a similarly extreme interpretation of the protection those attorneys provide to the government officials “relying” on their advice. In other words, “heads I win, tails you lose” results when the justice system does both of the following: (1) allows government officials to avoid culpability for their actions by commissioning legal hacks to justify what they want to do; and (2) makes it nearly impossible to punish the advising lawyers for their bald-faced hackery. As a result, as long as a government official launders his or her preordained illegal activity through the hocus-pocus of a sufficiently loyal legal hack, neither the official nor the legal hack will ever be held to account for their central roles in breaking the law.

This comment by Sarcastro reminded me tangentially of Hannah Arendt’s downright amazing “rule by Nobody” observation of modern government, which is chillingly apt today:

These definitions coincide with the terms which, since Greek antiquity, have been used to define the forms of government as the rule of man over man – of one or the few in monarchy and oligarchy, of the best or the many in aristocracy and democracy, to which today we ought to add the latest and perhaps most formidable form of such dominion, bureaucracy, or the rule by an intricate system of bureaux in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called the rule by Nobody. Indeed, if we identify tyranny as the government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done. It is this state of affairs which is among the most potent causes for the current world-wide rebellious unrest.

Offers a public health insurance option to provide the uninsured and those who can’t find affordable coverage with a real choice. The President believes this option will promote competition, hold insurance companies accountable and assure affordable choices. It is completely voluntary. The President believes the public option must operate like any private insurance company – it must be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.

Ok, most of you don’t know what the hell I am talking about. I beg your indulgence and I will explain:

* Jamesleo’s diary :: ::

We have been focusing on the economy and what has not or what has worked. I think we can all agree that the Stimulus was insufficient (thank you Dr. Paul Krugman you were right all along) in creating new jobs and being a “rising tide that lifted all boats. What do progressives do.
While this has been going on, we have had some incredible success in Afghanistan. Every day, a new Al Queda stronghold is overtaken and a new leader captured. One of them surely must know Bin Laden.
Find him, cpature him, if he is killed in the process, put his body on display.
Why? We need a game changer and fast.
If this happens, Obama becomes a national hero. He can then go to the American people and make his case for time
“Pleae, we overestimated the extent of the crisis”. Please give us time. With the same zeal and commitment that I captured this terrorist, I will fix the economy, pleas trust me.”
The Glen Beck’s will be stopped in their tracks. I can see the Sunday news programs, John Boehner, Mitch McConnel would be gasping Ha–di—hammid whatever. This cold buy us time in 2010.

Folks: I can think of no other tactic save a miracle in the job market. Even if the market added 90,000 jobs a month it would be way insufficient. We need a game changer and we need one fast.
If I am wrong, please correct. And please don’t give me that 9/11 was an inside job paranoia. That makes as much sense as Obama being a Muslim or a foreign born citizen.

So “Progressive.”
So different from Bush supporters and Republicans.
😯
So very VERY fucked up.

So.

One of the participants in the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville was a man named Peter Tefft. He was outed by the Twitter group "Yes, You're Racist," which had been posting screenshots of participants in an effort to expose them. His father, Pearce Tefft, has come out and publicly denounced his white supremacist son in an open letter […]

Heather Heyer is the latest casualty in a number of deaths at the hands of white nationalists. Foreign Policy recently published an FBI and Department of Homeland Security bulletin that concluded white supremacist groups were "responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016...more than any other domestic extremist movement." Despite th […]

As President Trump faces growing outrage over his response to the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, we bring you an exclusive: an interview with the great-great-grandsons of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. At least 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy can be found in public spaces across the country. But now a number of the monu […]

In a wide ranging discussion, Nina Turner and Paul Jay focus on the role of Trump, the GOP, corporate Democrats and corporate media in perpetuating systemic racism; they also address whether Nazi's should have a right to organize public rallies

Ecuador's former president Rafael Correa is accusing recently elected president Lenin Moreno of moving the country to the right, using corruption accusations against Vice-President and Correa friend Jorge Glas as cover. TRNN's Greg Wilpert reports

BRIDGEWATER, N.J./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Thursday decried the removal of monuments to the pro-slavery Civil War Confederacy, echoing white nationalists and drawing stinging rebukes from fellow Republicans in a controversy that has inflamed racial tensions.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump has stepped up his attacks on Republican senators, an approach he may regret if he is someday impeached and the Senate has to weigh charges against him stemming from an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has abandoned plans to create an infrastructure advisory council, the White House said on Thursday, the day after two other advisory groups were dismantled over the furor caused by Trump's remarks on white supremacists.

(Reuters) - Wisconsin's Republican-controlled state Assembly voted 59-30 on Thursday to approve a bill that paves the way for a $3 billion incentives package for a proposed liquid-crystal display plant by Taiwan's Foxconn.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.